https://hdl.handle.net/2123/5705 2026-06-04T20:18:32Z 2026-06-04T20:18:32Z Gardiner, James https://hdl.handle.net/2123/35270 2026-05-04T06:15:23Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

Queer Youth Articulating Wellbeing Through Reading and Writing Groups Gardiner, James In media, policy and research in Australia, queer youth have often been positioned as victims. This subject position has emerged in response to their very real disproportionate vulnerability, but tends to limit how these subjects are represented, by themselves and others. While alternative frameworks for understanding queer youth subjectivity, such as ‘queer thriving’, move beyond the victim, these can create new exclusions around what counts as an authentic, successful, or liveable queer life. This article explores the context for a mixed-methods research project with queer youth who participated in a reading and writing group. Using ethnography, semi-structured interviews and an action research approach, I investigate whether such groups offer practical possibilities for queer youth to make sense of and articulate their lives. Written while the field work is still underway, this article begins to reflect on how queer youth, through reading and writing together, might imagine, embody, and make visible under-explored modes of living ‘well’.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Taylor, Anthea https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33573 2026-04-28T02:26:05Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

Archiving Greer/Greer Archiving: Germaine Greer’s curatorial labour, feminist celebrity studies and archival methodologies Taylor, Anthea This article draws upon my engagement with the archive of controversial Australian celebrity feminist Germaine Greer to think through the role of archival methodologies within the field of feminist celebrity studies, especially given that the archive itself is heavily implicated in processes of celebrification. Sold in 2013 for AU$3 million, Greer’s extensive archive – consisting of over 500 boxes filled with notes and drafts of various books, press clippings, research files, personal and professional letters, diaries, audio-visual material, and assorted ephemera – is now held by the University of Melbourne. Amongst other things, this acquisition enables a mapping of the wider cultural reverberations of Greer’s celebrity feminist persona, as well as Greer’s own pronounced role in its strategic cultivation – including in and through the archive. As I will argue, the Greer archive is part of the performative practice and renown-building labour in which all living celebrities engage – as well as itself being evidence of it. That is, the archive does not only provide insights into Greer’s fame or the affective investments of her fans, it is a form of renown maintenance and extension in and of itself, which can be figured as a feminist practice consistent with Greer’s own recuperative feminist scholarship. In light of the above, and drawing upon insights from critical archival studies, I will consider Greer’s own curatorial practices and how they seek to shape the way the archive is consumed, the uses to which it is being put, and the kind of ‘Greers’ it seeks (not necessarily with success) to render visible.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Taylor, Anthea https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33572 2026-04-28T02:26:05Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

‘The most revolting ideas I’ve read in a woman’s magazine’: The Female Eunuch, Affective (dis)investments, and McCall’s reader-writers’ Taylor, Anthea In March 1971, American women’s magazine McCall’s published an extract of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Myriad unpublished letters to the editor contained in the Greer archive at the University of Melbourne reveal that the magazine’s readers were largely dismissive of Greer’s feminist vision. These reader-writers, best conceptualised as ‘anti-fans’, took both author and editor to task for criticising them as wives and mothers. Through an analysis of these letters, this article argues that their authors contested Greer’s burgeoning authority as a second-wave celebrity feminist largely by pathologising her; invoking essentialist assumptions about femininity; and mobilising discourses of ‘choice’ more commonly seen to be product of a ‘postfeminist’ representational environment. Through their anti-fan practices, they challenge Greer’s attempts to deprive housewives of agency, deploying rhetorical strategies that are at once reliant upon and highly critical of second-wave feminism. This article also problematises the notion that critically engaged audiences have emerged in any notable sense only recently due to digital media. Complicating dominant ways of framing the feminist past and the postfeminist present, this article demonstrates that celebrity feminists, including ‘blockbuster’ authors, have historically always elicited complex affective responses.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Amoah, Padmore Adusei Mok, Esther Wing Chit https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29007 2026-04-22T01:58:52Z 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

COVID-19 and Well-Being of Non-local Students: Implications for International Higher Education Governance Amoah, Padmore Adusei; Mok, Esther Wing Chit Non-local students have been one of the worst affected groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of them live in foreign countries/regions with limited social and economic support. This study examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its control measures on the well-being of non-local students globally. It also examines the effectiveness of university support for the well-being of non-local students. Data were derived from a global survey on non-local students’ knowledge, experiences, and well-being amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, which was conducted in April 2020 (n = 583). A significant proportion (42.6%) of the students had low well-being. We found that being worried about COVID-19 (B = − 0.206, p = 0.048), perceived disruption of academic activities (B = − 0.155, p = 0.024), perceived disruption of social activities (B = − 0.153, p = 0.044), and feeling lonely (B = − 0.340, p = 0.000) were negatively associated with the students’ well-being. However, informational support from universities was positively associated with their well-being (B = 0.225, p = 0.004). These findings are discussed in the context of higher education governance and practical changes necessary to promote non-local students’ well-being during and after the pandemic.

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z Fuller, G. McGuinness, K. Waitt, G. Buchanan, I. Lea, T. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25496 2026-04-22T01:50:31Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

The reactivated bike: Self-reported cycling activity during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Australia Fuller, G.; McGuinness, K.; Waitt, G.; Buchanan, I.; Lea, T. Highlights • 63% of respondents say they increased cycling during COVID-19 restrictions. • Recreational cycling has increased significantly, while there has been a significant decrease in commuter riding. • Women were more likely to rate improved cycling skills and confidence as important factors to post-COVID cycling. • Public transport restrictions and new bicycle lanes were not considered important factors in increased cycling activity.

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z Race, Kane Murphy, Dean Pienaar, Kiran Lea, Toby https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25477 2026-04-28T02:26:05Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

Injecting as a sexual practice: Cultural formations of ‘slamsex’. Race, Kane; Murphy, Dean; Pienaar, Kiran; Lea, Toby ‘Slamsex’ has emerged in gay vernacular in recent years to denote a particular way of taking drugs and a particular kind of sex. Slamming refers in this context to the practice of injecting drugs – typically crystal methamphetamine – intravenously. To pair ‘slamming’ with ‘sex’ is to propose that a particular mode of drug administration is constitutive of a particular kind of sex – a relatively novel idea that deserves some unpacking. What does it mean to make a route of drug administration definitional in the delineation of a sexual practice? What does this move reveal about contemporary practices of sex and drug consumption? In this article, we explore these questions with reference to theories of drug effects and practitioners’ accounts of slamsex. We conclude by considering the implications of our analysis for slamsex relations and associated harm reduction measures.

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z Pienaar, Kiran Murphy, Dean Race, Kane Lea, Toby https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25472 2026-04-28T02:26:06Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Sexualities and Intoxication: “To Be Intoxicated Is to Still Be Me, Just a Little Blurry”—Drugs, Enhancement and Transformation in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Cultures Pienaar, Kiran; Murphy, Dean; Race, Kane; Lea, Toby Despite evidence that drug use is higher among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) populations, research that explores the gendered and sexual dynamics of LGBTQ substance use is limited. Responding to this opening in the literature, and drawing on 32 qualitative interviews from an Australian study, we consider how LGBTQ consumers pursue particular drug effects to change their experience of gender and/or sexuality. Our analysis suggests that for many consumers, drug use and the experience of intoxication enhances sexual pleasure. In the context of gender variance, intoxication can facilitate free gender expression and, in some cases, palliate bodily discomfort. Acknowledging the generative effects of drug use for gender and sexual transformation, we conclude by commenting on the implications of our analysis for LGBTQ health policy and practice.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Pienaar, Kiran Murphy, Dean Race, Kane Lea, Toby https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25471 2026-04-28T02:26:06Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Problematising LGBTIQ drug use, governing sexuality and gender: A critical analysis of LGBTIQ health policy in Australia Pienaar, Kiran; Murphy, Dean; Race, Kane; Lea, Toby It is well-established that a high prevalence of substance use is found in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) populations; a finding that researchers attribute to the stigmatised status of non-normative sexual and gender expression, and the role of illicit drug use in the collective production of socio-sexual pleasures, expressivity and disclosure in LGBTIQ communities. Despite the connections between sexual experimentation and substance use, LGBTIQ consumption practices have rarely received the attention they deserve within the alcohol and other drug (AOD) field. In this paper, we draw on concepts from post-structuralist policy analysis to analyse how AOD consumption among sexual and gender minorities is constituted in the policies of three Australian LGBTIQ health organisations. Following Carol Bacchi’s (2009, p. xi) observation that we are “governed through problematisations rather than policies”, we consider how substance use in LGBTIQ populations has been formulated as a policy problem requiring intervention. Doing so allows us to identify the normative assumptions about minority sexual and gender identities that underpin dominant problematisations of LGBTIQ substance use. These include: a) high rates of AOD use in LGBTIQ populations constitute problems in and of themselves, regardless of individual patterns of use; b) LGBTIQ people are a vulnerable population with specialised needs; and c) sexualised drug use is associated with “disinhibition” and a range of risks (including HIV transmission, drug dependence and mental health issues). Addressing the implications of these assumptions for how LGBTIQ communities are governed, we suggest that problematisation is an embodied, situated process, and that there is much to be gained by reframing dominant problematisations of AOD consumption so that this process is better informed by the inventive practices of LGBTIQ consumers themselves.

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z Pienaar, Kiran Race, Kane Murphy, Dean Lea, Toby https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25470 2026-04-28T02:26:06Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Drugs as technologies of the self: Enhancement and transformation in LGBTQ cultures Pienaar, Kiran; Race, Kane; Murphy, Dean; Lea, Toby The consumption of drugs has long been a mainstay of urban queer cultures and it is well-recognised that complex connections exist between sexual minoritisation and desires to chemically alter bodily experience. Yet despite evidence that rates of consumption are higher among LGBTQ populations, research exploring the gendered and sexual dynamics of these forms of consumption is limited and tends to frame such consumption as a response to stigma, marginalisation and discrimination. Against this dominant explanatory frame, this article explores the diverse experiences of LGBTQ consumers, and in so doing highlights both the pleasures and benefits of consumption, as well as potential risks and harms. Contributing to the growing body of ontopolitically oriented research that treats the materiality of drugs as emergent and contingent, we trace the ontologies of drugs, sexuality and gender that LGBTQ subjects generate through specific practices of consumption. Our analysis draws on qualitative interviews with 42 self-identified LGBTQ people from an Australian study designed to explore how sexual and gender-diverse minorities pursue particular drug effects to enhance or transform their experience of gender and/or sexuality. Our participants’ accounts illuminate how drug consumption materialises in relation to sex, desire and play where it enhances pleasure, facilitates transgression and increases endurance. In the context of gender variance, our findings suggest that drug use can transform gendered experience and enable the expression of non-normative gender identities, in the process challenging gender binarism. By considering the productive role of drugs in enacting queer identities, this article treats drugs as ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault 1988) and explores how drug consumption, sex and gender shape each other across a range of settings. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our findings for research and service provision, and suggest ways of engaging LGBTQ consumers in terms that address their diverse priorities and experiences.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Chen, Xi https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18904 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Sojourner intimacies: Chinese international students negotiating dating in Sydney Chen, Xi Despite being a large community of sojourners making up 30% of the total international student population in Australia (End of Year Summary of International Student Enrolment Data, 2017), Chinese international students’ everyday social experience is severely under-studied. This thesis is a mini ethnographic archive informed by nineteen qualitative interviews and autoethnographic analysis about the marginalities and injustices Chinese international students face in their everyday negotiation of dating and intimacies. Findings discuss a range of issues including clashing intergenerational expectations, peer marginalisation, navigating multicultural Australia, racial depersonalisation in the dating scene, "yellow fever" as a form of hermeneutical injustice, ambiguous sexual consent, domestic violence in de facto relationships (queer and straight), and the impacts/implications of legal status within abusive relationships and the dating pool. This thesis stands as the first qualitative study to inform the vacuum of knowledge about Chinese international students' intimate social activities in Australia. Meanwhile, it documents an authentic fragment of reality about the Chinese sojourners community that is often opaque to the public eye and mystified in mainstream Australian media discourses. Despite structural disempowerment, this thesis demonstrates why Chinese sojourners are not trapped in a passive victimhood, they are individual life planners developing the best survival strategies they can manage with the limited resources they have.

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z Zhou, Amelia https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18231 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

Towards new future terrains: Reorienting Asiatic femininities in the speculative imagination Zhou, Amelia This thesis investigates Asian feminist imaginations of the future through the lens of speculative fiction. It aims to revise binary techno-orientalist understandings of Asia and its subjectivities predominant in Western heteronormative visions of tomorrow. I intervene in the West’s exclusionary claims for futurity dependent on the subjugation of Asia as a feminised, machinic and passive site. Instead, I argue for rearticulations of alternate speculative futurities attending for more multiple, nuanced and irreducible becomings for racialised, gendered citizens. Through close readings of two key texts, Jennifer Phang’s 2015 film Advantageous and Larissa Lai’s 2002 novel Salt Fish Girl, I locate narratives of transformation, resilience and survival for Asian feminine subjectivities, unpacking themes around reproductive technologies, maternity, racialised biotechnological regimes and queer desire. I investigate how their narratives embolden agency for Asiatic femininities and demonstrate the potentialities embedded within their temporalities.

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Skadiang, Joel https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18233 2026-04-22T05:25:48Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

True Black Metal: Authenticity, Nostalgia, and Transgression in the Black Metal Scene Skadiang, Joel Black metal as a distinct genre of popular music is characterized by a general yearning for authenticity. This authenticity can be expressed through production values, musical techniques adopted, and style of dress and presentation among members of the scene. In this context, members of the scene are presented with a dilemma given the demand to both showcase individuality in their taste and style while also conforming to what it means to be “true” or authentic within the scene. Due to these traits, “The debates surrounding heavy metal and the people who make it – over meaning, character, behavior, values, censorship, violence, alienation, and community – mark metal as an important site for cultural contestation” (Walser 1993: 10). This thesis explores ideas surrounding authenticity in the black metal community as they are continually reproduced through the negotiation of normative relations to tradition found within the black metal community. It will also analyse the policing of its borders, examining how certain identities and practices are inherently constructed as more “authentic” to black metal while others are underrepresented, and thus may be seen as marginalized. I want to discuss the problematic conception of authenticity in the genre, in particular its static relation to the genre’s history defined in terms of the styles of older “second-wave” bands (centrally those bands understood to be True Norwegian Black Metal) which are celebrated as the “hegemonic” form of black metal. As well as a discourse analysis of the scene in these terms, this thesis will centrally include a virtual ethnography of online communities for black metal fans. By examining the content and systems of distinction produced within these online communities, I will consider how the static nature of the authentic black metal style and associated “gate-keeping” in this community regulate how authenticity is produced within the scene.

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Wilson, Jes https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18225 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

Awkward Sex: Revisiting Rosalind Gill’s Sex Advice Repertoires in the Context of New Media Listicles Wilson, Jes This thesis revisits Rosalind Gill’s 2009 influential study of sex-advice columns in Glamour (UK) magazine in order to test her arguments about mediated intimacy within the new media genre of the listicle. This is achieved through employing a discourse and content analysis of a sample of 12 ‘awkward sex’ listicles. While the three interpretive repertoires that Gill identifies at work in Glamour do not appear to be as actively employed in my sample, I propose that the listicles still employ ‘postfeminist sensibilities’ predominately through the classifier of ‘awkward.’ While these listicles resemble Gill’s sample insofar as they remain centred on male sexual pleasure and the regulation of women’s bodies, I highlight the manner in which mediated intimacy is now secured through peer-to-peer discourse rather than the expert discourse that was the focus of Gill’s original study.

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Masters, Jamaya https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18226 2026-04-22T05:25:44Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

‘Hey, mate!’: Intervening the masculinity crisis in ABC’s Man Up Masters, Jamaya This thesis explores the complex entanglements between governmentality, masculinity, health, and mateship in the television series Man Up (2016). Man Up was a three-part documentary series broadcast by the ABC in 2016 that explored how the ‘the pressure to be an Aussie man (is) fuelling a suicide crisis’ (Man Up, episode one: 2016). In this sense, the series was a direct intervention into the Australian population with an intention to benefit men’s lives. However, interventions come with specific presumptions that give shape to these issues. In this sense, I explore how Man Up constructed the problem of masculinity and mental health as one that concerns an exclusive type of man, and is principally focused on issues to do with emotionality and mateship. This effectively occludes those deeper problems to do with homophobia, sexism, and racism that have been a significant part of feminist, queer, and masculinity scholarship, which has major implications for the exclusive category of man the series is able to reach, and effectively reinforces rather than redefines masculine stereotypes. Further, by attempting to re-shape masculinity purely at the level of the self, Man Up reinforces neoliberal ideologies of health that make individuals responsible for themselves, rather than taking into consideration the social, economic, and political conditions of these men’s existence. In turn, I explore how the men of Man Up are also entangled within material realities, such as drought, globalisation, and shifting labour practices, in order to complicate the self-responsibilising logic of the text. In turn, I consider how Man Up might move beyond rigid categories of gender identity, by considering gender in relation to the ways in which it is entangled with more than social constructs.

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Redden, Guy https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18223 2026-04-22T05:44:40Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Culture, Value and Commensuration: The knowledge politics of indicators. Redden, Guy

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Reid, Alex https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18224 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

Unruly Women, Queer Objects: Analysing Object Conduct in Todd Haynes’ Carol (2015) Reid, Alex My thesis undertakes an analysis of object conduct - the way individuals socially and personally engage with matter - in Todd Haynes’ Carol (2015), a film about a clandestine lesbian relationship in 1950’s America. Through the use of a combination of material cultures theory and queer theory, my thesis performs a close reading of the social and personal interactions that emerge from gloves and cameras in the film. Furthermore, my argument traces how the homosexual and heterosexual relationships between the characters are created, maintained, made durable or tenuous through the objects in the film. Feminist film theory and queer feminist theory provides a secondary framework to consider the temporal nuances of a film made in the present but set in the past. I locate the status of objects as more than just things, but rather multivalent transfer points, and seek to further Scott Herrings inquiry: what happens when everyday objects become deviant? This multi-disciplinary approach allows my thesis to consider the destabilizing effects of non-normative object useage has on normative categories of culture. Ultimately, my thesis shows the disruptive effect a lesbian relationship - made and maintained through gloves and a camera - can have on the patriarchal and heteronormative hegemonies of 1950’s America.

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Morgan, Brett J.R. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18227 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

Think Global, Reconfigure the Local: How Intermediaries Articulate Pro-Environmental Values and Practices Morgan, Brett J.R. Contemporary debates about the conservation of natural ecosystems and resources owe most of their influence to the rise of sustainable development, or, sustainability. Since its inception, ‘sustainability’ has become the dominant paradigm for addressing global ecological problems, as well as a strong motivator for changing patterns of behaviour at the level of individual people. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) introduced this framework into global proenvironmental discourse in 1987, and it has since been the source of many debates and discussions within and between academic disciplines. One of the central issues has been the opposition between agency and structure. This is the problem of whether to appeal to agency (theories of individual behaviour change) or structure (theories of social practice) when addressing global environmental problems, as these fields are generally characterised as necessarily opposed to one another. However, each of them at least conceives of a particular kind of agency, meaning that both make an appeal to ‘the individual’ in one way or another. The ultimate aim of this thesis, then, is to reconfigure the way in which individual people are framed by and thus implicated in contemporary discussions about sustainability. In order to do this, I will be drawing heavily on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of the ‘cultural intermediary,’ as well as Stuart Hall’s (cf. Grossberg, 1986) theory of ‘articulation.’ I propose a framework that characterises proenvironmental groups as ‘intermediaries,’ as each of these groups acts as a ‘mediator’ or ‘point of articulation’ between the structural dimensions of sustainability and the individual people that they address. I will analyse this framework by appealing to two close studies of two different intermediaries: Greenpeace, and its ‘Save the Reef’ campaign, and Sydney’s Inner West Council, and its ‘Home Eco Challenge.’

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Tong, Anne https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18228 2026-04-22T05:25:48Z 2018-05-24T00:00:00Z

Chinese Food in Australia: Diaspora, taste, and affect Tong, Anne This thesis examines the political and cultural significance of Chinese food in Australia by considering its specific discourses and representations. It begins by mapping the politicised history of early Chinese food in the 19th century and considers the circumstances underpinning its emergence and later proliferation. Building on cultural studies scholarship about migration and food from Australia and the United States, this thesis examines the interrelated link between migration and the generation of new cultural products. I reframe westernised Chinese food as an innovative and necessary response from the Chinese community. By identifying the adaptable and creative nature of Chinese food (and people), I problematise the belief that westernised Chinese food is “inauthentic” and a complete victim to western supremacy. This thesis indicates how Chinese food is an effective place from which to understand differences, identity, and power. Situating Chinese food in the 21st century, I analyse how notions and tastes for it have changed over time, within the Chinese Australian diaspora and more broadly. With a focus on material examples and auto-ethnography, I examine how intergenerational and cultural differences in the diaspora can influence what we eat and how we eat. Cautious not to undermine the structuring effects of racism and class privilege in food discourses, I consider how whiteness and middle-upper class “tastemakers” shape how we perceive and relate to Chinese food. Finally, this thesis considers the capacities of Chinese food by looking at the visceral feelings and affects it can produce. I examine how commensality (eating together) can help encourage new ways of thinking, feeling, sharing, and relating. Ultimately, this thesis moves toward a view of Chinese food that embraces multiplicities and variance, as opposed to singularities and tradition.

2018-05-24T00:00:00Z Skadiang, Joel https://hdl.handle.net/2123/17219 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2017-09-20T00:00:00Z

True Black Metal: Authenticity, Nostalgia, and Transgression in the Black Metal Scene Skadiang, Joel Black metal as a distinct genre of popular music is characterized by a general yearning for authenticity. This authenticity can be expressed through production values, musical techniques adopted, and style of dress and presentation among members of the scene. In this context, members of the scene are presented with a dilemma given the demand to both showcase individuality in their taste and style while also conforming to what it means to be “true” or authentic within the scene. Due to these traits, “The debates surrounding heavy metal and the people who make it – over meaning, character, behavior, values, censorship, violence, alienation, and community – mark metal as an important site for cultural contestation” (Walser 1993: 10). This thesis explores ideas surrounding authenticity in the black metal community as they are continually reproduced through the negotiation of normative relations to tradition found within the black metal community. It will also analyse the policing of its borders, examining how certain identities and practices are inherently constructed as more “authentic” to black metal while others are underrepresented, and thus may be seen as marginalized. I want to discuss the problematic conception of authenticity in the genre, in particular its static relation to the genre’s history defined in terms of the styles of older “second-wave” bands (centrally those bands understood to be True Norwegian Black Metal) which are celebrated as the “hegemonic” form of black metal. As well as a discourse analysis of the scene in these terms, this thesis will centrally include a virtual ethnography of online communities for black metal fans. By examining the content and systems of distinction produced within these online communities, I will consider how the static nature of the authentic black metal style and associated “gate-keeping” in this community regulate how authenticity is produced within the scene.

2017-09-20T00:00:00Z Wilson, Jes https://hdl.handle.net/2123/17205 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2017-09-12T00:00:00Z

Awkward Sex: Revisiting Rosalind Gill’s Sex Advice Repertoires in the Context of New Media Listicles Wilson, Jes This thesis revisits Rosalind Gill’s 2009 influential study of sex-advice columns in Glamour (UK) magazine in order to test her arguments about mediated intimacy within the new media genre of the listicle. This is achieved through employing a discourse and content analysis of a sample of 12 ‘awkward sex’ listicles. While the three interpretive repertoires that Gill identifies at work in Glamour do not appear to be as actively employed in my sample, I propose that the listicles still employ ‘postfeminist sensibilities’ predominately through the classifier of ‘awkward.’ While these listicles resemble Gill’s sample insofar as they remain centred on male sexual pleasure and the regulation of women’s bodies, I highlight the manner in which mediated intimacy is now secured through peer-to-peer discourse rather than the expert discourse that was the focus of Gill’s original study. Honours Thesis

2017-09-12T00:00:00Z Jones, Cassandra https://hdl.handle.net/2123/14025 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Public and Private Parents: The Gendered Division of Labour and Australian Paid Parental Leave Policy Jones, Cassandra Since the 1970s, the gendered division of household labour has been an important issue for both academic disciplines and policy-makers. This thesis considers the gendered division of labour in relation to Australian family policy, arguing that policy has a particular significance to the production of gendered familial relations in liberal societies. Specifically, this thesis considers paid parental leave policy and its implications for the gendered division of childcare labour in Australian heterosexual households. In doing so, it contributes to scholarly discussions about the ways various approaches to family policy might enable or impede progress toward a more equitable division of childcare in Australia. Drawing from critical theory, feminist studies of liberalism and Raewyn Connell’s work on masculinity, I provide analysis of The Coalition’s Policy for Paid Parental Leave (LNP 2013) and of historical Australian family policy, considering the ways this has failed to recognise the shared responsibility of childcare labour. I argue that Australian family policy has worked to enshrine childcare responsibilities onto women and mothers. And that this history and contemporary policy framework implicitly privileges and excludes certain men. I argue that this is exemplary of the way gender hierarchies are reaffirmed by policy and the way paid parental leave policies can work to reinforce the gendered division of childcare labour. Centrally, I am interested in the power relations that are implicit in historical and contemporary Australian family policy’s positioning of women and men, mothers and fathers, and in the broader question of what good policy might look like in this area.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Phillips, Anna https://hdl.handle.net/2123/14029 2026-04-22T05:25:40Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Medical Curiosity and Tabloid Freakery: Contrasting Media Representations of Trans Children and Adults Phillips, Anna In 2014, the US edition of TIME magazine ran a cover story featuring Laverne Cox entitled ‘The Transgender Tipping Point’ that declared a new frontier for civil rights in North America. The article both refers to and demonstrates an increased attention towards trans people in mainstream media. Cox’s rise to fame, and the discussions emerging out of her media presence, is just one example of this increased attention. In order to explore this emergence, my thesis examines the differential treatment of trans children and adults in television and print media. It uses textual and visual analysis to examine news broadcasts, talk shows, television documentaries, magazines, and newspaper articles. My conceptual framework draws from trans and queer theory, feminist theory, critical disability scholarship, and sociological analyses of childhood. This thesis demonstrates that increased visibility does not necessarily equate to trans-positive or constructive forms of representation. This is pertinent to both sensationalised and out rightly transphobic representations of adults, and to what at first glance appear as more positive or sensitive portrayals of children. Through a comparative analysis of the media’s treatment of trans children and adults, the complex nature of such representations becomes clear.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Fogarty, Nicholas David Kemm https://hdl.handle.net/2123/14026 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Becoming Rower: Male Embodiment and Intimacy in an Inner West Rowing Club Fogarty, Nicholas David Kemm While sociological analyses of masculine sporting cultures have provided us with adept explorations of discursive practices in the field, I suggest that there are deeper modalities of communication in which athlete’s intentions are expressed and understood through inter-corporeal and non-cognitive processes. This transdisciplinary thesis supplements sociological analysis with a participant observational approach to explore both verbal and corporeal communication between men within the sport of rowing. I conduct ethnographic fieldwork at Kenswick, a rowing club located within Sydney’s inner suburbs that was first established in 1879. Following its reincarnation after a fire in the late 1990’s, the club developed a new membership demographic that now reflects that of inner Sydney more broadly. Close to half of the club’s members are gay-identifying with varying degrees of sexual openness relating to the various and overlapping social and sporting circuits operating within the club. Over four months I was embedded within the elite competitive men’s rowing squad across which time I observed that the combination of open and ambiguous sexual orientations resulted in tacit but strict protocols on and off the water. In line with Latour's argument that the social researcher should ‘follow’ (2005: 69) the interplay between human and non-human actants, I attended to the various machines engaged in the different zones of training both on and off the water. Using a combination of auto-ethnographic reflection and new materialist studies I explore how the material actants engaged in the sport of rowing engender varying inter-corporeal collaborations between men. As a result, I argue that masculine intimacy, discomfort and power must be understood on a corporeal level as well as the discursive level, with which we normally associate gender politics.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Ryan, Rosemary https://hdl.handle.net/2123/11474 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2014-01-01T00:00:00Z

Bearing Responsibility:Reconceiving RU486 and the regulation of women's reproductive decisions Ryan, Rosemary This thesis explores the status of abortion in Australia and analyses the representations of women that are produced and relied upon in public discourse on this issue. Drawing predominantly on the field of corporeal feminist theory I examine the historical and political-legal context of abortion in Australia over time, and in particular debates concerning the medical abortion drug RU486. I argue that the debate has been informed by dualistic understandings of women as irrational, maternal vessels requiring paternalistic regulation in the interests of the reproduction of the nation. This thesis questions the assumption that oppostion to abortion is primarily motivated by concern for the foetus, and explores and elaborates the gendered and politico-cultural constructions of sexuality, the nation and women's 'natural' role that inform the debate. Finally, I demonstrate that constructs of morality, rationality, sexuality and the nation have: been informed and limited by dualistic imaginaries of women and in response I argue for the feminist potential of an alternative embodied ethical framework.

2014-01-01T00:00:00Z Konneh, Ameisa Meima https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9763 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

“HAIR IS IT, FOR AFRICANS:” African-Australian Hair Stories Konneh, Ameisa Meima This thesis examines the relationship African-Australian men and women have with their hair. Through open-ended interviews with seven African-Australian men and women, aged 22-63, this thesis analyses the cultural significance of hair and its methods of stylization in the African-Australian diaspora. Building upon empiricism and scholarship from the United States and Britain, this thesis broadens the debate by including the voices of African-Australians. It explores the highly ritualized modes of black hairstyling practices in Australia as intra-racially disciplined, managed and contained. I examine Afro-diasporic hair practices of weaving, braiding, and going ‘natural,’ through established frameworks that psychologise and depsychologise black hair practices. This thesis problematises academic and socio-cultural arguments that situate Afro-diasporic women who choose to process their hair as engaged in ‘inauthentic’ practices engendered by self-hatred, low self-esteem, and the desire to be white. I explore the gendered nature of Afro-diasporic hairstyling, and the significant burden of representation placed upon African-Australian girls and women to perform culture on behalf of the African-Australian diaspora. Finally, this thesis examines the industrial and personal economy of black hair as imbricated with the explicit and implicit labour of African-Australian identity.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Pena, Camilo Enrique https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9555 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

Ventriloqueer: Finding Voice in the Strange Boyhoods of Disney Princesses Pena, Camilo Enrique This thesis considers two samples from the Disney Princess film canon as texts that can speak to, and be reclaimed in the name of, queer experience. Ron Clements and John Musker’s The Little Mermaid (1989), and Nathan Greno and Byron Howard’s Tangled (2011) are the texts examined to propose such a notion. Conceived within the qualitative methodological tradition of autoethnography, the autobiographical genre of writing where personal lived experiences are related back to the cultural, this thesis utilises the autoethnographic mode as both text and method to interpret Tangled and The Little Mermaid. Comparative to other qualitative methods, autoethnography enables this project’s exploration of the different ways in which one can receive, interpret, reclaim, and experiment with the type of texts one can produce when playing with voice. Operating on a less obvious level, this thesis critiques language as a symbolic order of gender binarism and heterosexuality through unconventional writing practices. By narrating my coming out story through Tangled as a creative vessel, Chapter Two mobilises Ken Plummer’s notion of the coming-out post-narrative. Chapter Three examines a queer relation to temporality through The Little Mermaid that draws on Josè Esteban Muñoz’s theory of futurity to offer, in the lexicon of Eve Sedgwick, a reparative model for thinking about queer ontology.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Sharkey, Grace https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9553 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

Brief Encounter: Sex and Intimacy in Andrew Haigh’s "Weekend" Sharkey, Grace This thesis is an exploration of the representation of gay male intimacy in Andrew Haigh’s "Weekend" (2011), a film about a brief encounter between two men. The thesis stages a second brief encounter between Haigh’s film and Lauren Berlant’s writing on feeling. Where Berlant’s ideas are originally worked out in relation to the genre of melodrama and the female complaint, I translate her ideas about intimacy and cruel optimism into the space of ordinary gay life as represented in Haigh’s film.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Fuller, Sean https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9556 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

“Quality TV”: The reinvention of U.S. television Fuller, Sean This thesis examines the rise to prominence of a new form of “quality television” that has appeared in the U.S. since the 1990s. There are competing and sometimes conflicting ways to define “quality television”, depending on different histories and prioritising different characteristics - sometimes production methods, sometimes viewing and distribution practices, and sometimes genre hybridity and transformation. For each, however, the 1990s is a watershed decade. The mainstreaming of cable television, the new dominance of video and then DVD collections of series, a decline in broadcast television’s audience share and the rapid expansion of the internet as an entertainment media option together created new opportunities for a more ‘cinematic’ television that hailed an active audience interested in formally and narratively challenging television. Every account of quality television turns on claims to exceed and subvert the expectations of existing television formats and genres while also using those to attract an audience. This is famously exemplified by the 90s HBO slogan “It’s not TV. It’s HBO” (since 2011 just “it’s HBO”). This apparent difference is only partly about heightened production values. Quality television tends to foreground genre hybridity, genre self-reflexivity, and intertextuality, and its viewers have become associated with dedicated fandom and new viewing practices such as “binge viewing”, the increasing frequency of watching “off-air”, and torrent culture. The quality television viewer is appealed to by, and not in spite of, their status as a niche audience, and the cultural value accruing to their niche status has transformed investment in casting, scripting, acting directing, producing and critically evaluating television. Quality television has not only become a dominant television format but the benchmark against which “mainstream” television is measured. To develop this argument I employ textual and discourse analysis and critical theory, and refer to a range of series produced between 1990 and 2013. These include Twin Peaks (1990-91), The X-Files (1993-2002), The Sopranos (1999-2007), The Wire (2002-2008), Breaking Bad (2008—), Game of Thrones (2011—), Girls (2012—) and House of Cards (2013—). These examples offer an historical range of U.S. television since 1990 with emphasis on developments that I argue have brought quality television to its current visibility.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Woodward, Marian https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9554 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

Ditch the Witch: Julia Gillard and gender in Australian public discourse Woodward, Marian This thesis explores the interplay of gender, media, politics and women’s political representation in Australia. I examine how the Australian media has tended to reinforce rather than challenge dominant cultural aspects of Australian politics. Specifically, I analyse the ways in which Australian media has reflected women’s marginalisation in parliament. As Australia’s first female head of state, Julia Gillard’s term as Prime Minister provides a unique opportunity to analyse explicit and implicit ways in which gender has been used by media commentators in their assessment of her achievements. Analysis of the media’s treatment of Julia Gillard is used throughout the thesis, as her time in office exposed underlying conflicts surrounding gender and sexism in Australian media and public discourse. Media response to Gillard’s so-called Misogyny Speech is used as a particular case study. The thesis draws on a range of scholarship and commentary, including the works of Erving Goffman, Walter Lippmann, Pierre Bourdieu, Robin Lakoff, Anne Summers, Julia Baird, Pippa Norris and Marian Sawer, to construct a framework through which to examine the period of Gillard’s prime ministership. The last two writers (Norris and Sawer), inter alia, discuss the significance of women’s representation in parliament. In particular, the analysis highlights the significance of Anne Summers’ contribution to Australian feminism and draws on her Newcastle Speech (August 2012). I argue that Summers’ ideas and writing have been influential in shaping public discourse on Julia Gillard. I place the widely varied media responses to Gillard’s Misogyny Speech into a historical and comparative context to demonstrate the conflict within Australian society around issues of gender, feminism and female participation in public life.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Murphy, Caitlin https://hdl.handle.net/2123/8864 2026-04-22T05:25:44Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Snog, Marry or Avoid? Class, taste and the making of selfhood in makeover televison Murphy, Caitlin ‘Snog, Marry or Avoid?: Class, taste and the labour of selfhood in makeover television’, is an exploration of the way social stratification is visited on individual and collective corporeality, externalised through the mechanics of taste and regulated within the makeover television genre. Research for this thesis has been primarily informed by the theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who, in the latter half of the twentieth century, aimed to expose the role of culture as implicated in the functioning of power within capitalist societies. Bourdieu’s work reminds us that social stratification is inevitably inscribed on corporeality, through the structure of habitus and its relation to capital. This thesis demonstrates how class often informs the subtext of makeover television – as middle-class tastes are held as the key to affecting legitimate selfhood – yet social difference is subsumed in the ideology of individualism. These concepts are developed with reference to Snog Marry Avoid? (2008--), a British ‘make-under’ series that subtly works to equate middle-class taste with a ‘natural’, desirable state of being. Through examination of this text, questions are raised about the arbitrariness of ‘good’ taste, the durability of habitus and how these constructs inhibit social mobility and interpersonal success. Ultimately, this thesis figures as an indictment of the way (classed) bodies are devalued by discourses of self-legitimation.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Bull-McMahon, Aimee https://hdl.handle.net/2123/8863 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

“Say no to burqas”: geographies of nation and citizenship in Newtown Bull-McMahon, Aimee This thesis is concerned with the ways in which instances of everyday racism reproduce geographies of national belonging and exclusion in the city, focusing specifically on an activist campaign in Newtown, Australia, which called on the community to ‘Say no to burqas’. The focal point of this one-man campaign was a large, street facing mural, depicting a veiled woman, crossed out inside a red circle. The mural attracted much community opposition, and was defaced over sixty-four times. This thesis deconstructs the ways in which the mural campaign inscribed a particular national imaginary onto Newtown, constituted through the exclusion of the Muslim other; attending to the roots of this imaginary in racialised and gendered regimes of citizenship which privilege white, liberal civility. It goes on to show how the mural both reproduced, and was implicated in, the classed geographies of Australian multiculturalism, which figure the inner city as diverse and cosmopolitan, in opposition to the suburban as a site of ethnic criminality and multicultural failure. Finally, this thesis looks to various instances of organised opposition to the mural as examples of insurgent citizenship, capable of reimagining the relationship between place, nation and political community, in response to the ethical, political and practical task of living together in the multicultural city.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Ewen, Monique https://hdl.handle.net/2123/8686 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

'What A Girl Wants, What A Girl Needs': Father-Daughter Intimacies in Therapeutic Literature and Teen Film Ewen, Monique This dissertation tracks the operations of broken family discourse through both therapeutic literature and popular teen film. It is interested in the way that young women and girls are implicated in supporting and maintaining the authority of fathers across separated families. The girl--‐power oriented films of the 1990s and 2000s are offered as a productive source for understanding the agency and complex subjectivity of girls who negotiate families marked by separation. In comparison to this girl--‐centric discourse, it is argued the therapeutic literature creates narrow and limited subject positions for girls as either innocent saviours or vulnerable victims of ‘broken’ families. In addition, it is argued that aspects of the therapeutic literature perpetuate established gender divisions and apportion blame to mothers for the breakdown of the traditional family unit. To explore these issues the first half of this dissertation surveys the therapeutic field on marriage and divorce, looking in particular at keywords in the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage and a recent review article published in this journal: Linda Nielsen’s ‘Divorced Fathers and Their Daughters: A Review of Research’ (2011). The second half of the dissertation explores the interaction between fantasy, fairy--‐tale and girl--‐power in teen films from 1995 to 2007, looking in particular at What A Girl Wants (2003) starring Amanda Bynes and Colin Firth. The discussion of these texts is framed within the field of girlhood studies, and draws on theories of ‘tween’ culture and feminist concerns about commercialisation and agency. Taking a discursive rather than aesthetic approach to the film text, I employ an interpretative strategy that takes seriously the desires and disavowals expressed in fictional narratives directed at teen or iv pre--‐teen audiences. As I hope to demonstrate, contemporary films targeted at girls have the capacity to narrativise these concerns in ways that shift the debate about divorced families away from a pathologising account of the damaged child. They direct us instead towards a more productive understanding of how changing family dynamics are actively negotiated by all parties—including those female minors otherwise understood to be outside of, and at risk from, the devolution and reformation of adult intimacies. Keywords: girlhood, gender, sexuality, fathers, daughters, teen film, family

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Mitchell, Emma https://hdl.handle.net/2123/8038 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Seeing blue: negotiating the politics of Avatar media activism Mitchell, Emma This thesis examines how the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar (2009) has been taken-up in media activism directed towards Indigenous struggles against imperialism. It assumes the importance of locating this phenomenon within the discursive and material regimes that mediate, enable, and constrain it. I therefore offer a contextualised analysis of the film and media relating to its appropriation, which focuses on the representational practices and structural mechanisms that inform the production, circulation, and reception of the texts. This approach emphasises the tensions and contradictions that underpin activists’ relationship to the media they mobilise. Such contradictions are particularly apparent in relation to the politics of race that shape Avatar, the Indigenous activism that references it, and the media regimes that make this possible. The very forces that marginalise Indigenous voices empower auteur James Cameron to speak on their behalf and to be heard. Activists must also negotiate the tension between co-opting media spectacle and being commercialised as spectacle. However, refusing a simple critique of the representations activists deploy as media spectacles, I argue for a model that foregrounds the alliances that they seek to engender. Drawing on the work of feminist scholars Oliver (2001) and Deslandes (2010), I signal a theoretical approach that focuses on how the mediated spectator relates to such representations and insists on the spectator’s responsibility to respond. Acknowledging that the tensions that animate Avatar media activism can be both constrictive and creative, this project seeks a model that maximises the potential for the latter. It thus resists the paralysis of activism that can come with critiquing how we fight for the world we imagine.

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Howse, Eloise https://hdl.handle.net/2123/8037 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Menstruating the Past, Consuming the Future: Analysing Sanitary Hygiene Products through the work of Walter Benjamin Howse, Eloise This thesis explores how the menstruating subject is articulated in contemporary consumer culture and through practices of consumption. This results in an alternate reading of the menstruating subject that brings together broader questions related to modernity and history. Consumption in modernity occupies a troubled place for feminist theorists and activists; considering consumption requires the rejection of assumptions about the consumer as a blank slate on which advertisers and marketers write their products. The assumed passivity of the young female consumer is also readily questioned, particularly in relation to sanitary hygiene products. Using the work of Walter Benjamin, particularly his ideas of „now-time‟, the dialectical image and technological reproducibility, allows for a different type of analysis of the menstruating subject in modernity. Understanding how the past, present and future are constructed in current sanitary hygiene product advertising and branding leads to new ways of accessing the everyday for young women in contemporary Australia. Benjamin‟s literary trope of the fragment is also discussed and used in conjunction with the cultural artefacts of everyday objects and commodities. Looking at the visual and digital media of two brands of sanitary hygiene products Moxie and U by Kotex, framed by an autoethnographic approach, I offer a way of considering menstruation and consumption together whilst also suggesting new possibilities for how we frame the everyday for young women in modernity.

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Redden, Guy https://hdl.handle.net/2123/5860 2026-04-22T01:59:02Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Great British Binge Drinking Debate Redden, Guy Guy Redden questions some of the assumptions behind recent measures to discourage binge drinking.

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Redden, Guy https://hdl.handle.net/2123/5859 2026-04-22T01:59:03Z 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z

Redden, G. (2003). "Read the Whole Thing: Journalism, Weblogs and the Re-mediation of the War in Iraq." Redden, Guy The Net’s uses are now diverse, covering many aspects of commerical, public and private life. The idea that it transforms all activities in the same or equivalent ways is no longer tenable. This paper examines a particular form of online activity—weblogging, and how it has allowed for specific new forms of popular political communication in the context of the Second Gulf War. After describing the basics of weblogging, the paper discusses Western media coverage of the war and then shows how ‘warbloggers’ positioned themselves vis-à-vis media coverage and propaganda, creating commentaries that frequently combined media and political criticism. While bloggers of every political hue offered a range of perspectives and personal styles, some general tendencies are evident in warblogging discourse. The piece ends by questioning the significance of warblogging in terms of its potential contribution to democratic communication.

2003-01-01T00:00:00Z Redden, Guy https://hdl.handle.net/2123/5858 2026-04-22T01:59:02Z 2001-01-01T00:00:00Z

Grassroots and Digital Branches in the Age of Transversal Politics Redden, Guy

2001-01-01T00:00:00Z Hickey-Moody, Anna https://hdl.handle.net/2123/5783 2026-04-22T01:58:52Z 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

Intellectual disability, sensation and thinking through affect Hickey-Moody, Anna

2007-01-01T00:00:00Z Redden, Guy https://hdl.handle.net/2123/5729 2026-04-22T01:59:03Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Making over the Talent Show Redden, Guy

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z